Healthcare Strategic Growth Blog

A Behind the Curtain Look into Stratasan’s Planning Process

By Jason Moore

As we near the end of 2018, goal setting and annual planning are top of mind for all of us. Strategic planning is a useful process for organizations of all shapes and sizes and a well-defined strategic plan is key for companies that want to thrive, grow, and remain competitive. In this post, I want to give you a peek behind the curtain into our process to help you better understand how we think about and plan for the future of our business.

Stratasan’s co-founder and CTO, Brian Dailey, introduced Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why it Matters by Richard Rumelt to our executive leadership team (ELT)* in late 2017. After reading and discussing it as a group, we decided to implement this methodology to our strategic planning process. Starting this process so late in the year though meant our 2018 strategy was not completed until the year had already begun. This limited how effective our 2018 planning could be, but we still recognized that we’d landed on a good process. This year, we were motivated to start earlier and are already seeing positive synergy around our 2019 strategies as a result.

Tags: strategic planning, annual planning, growth planning, strategic growth planning

Measure Effectiveness and Communicate Value to Your Organization

By Brian Dailey

One of the great things about attending the Society of Healthcare Strategy & Market Development (SHSMD) annual conference is talking directly with our customers. If one were to build a Venn diagram of SHSMD attendees and Stratasan clientele, the circles would very nearly overlap.

A common thread I've heard in these conversations is that proving the value of planning and marketing to the rest of the business can be very difficult. Businesses want to see a very clear return on investment, and it's on marketing and planning departments to not only do their jobs, but also communicate the value of their jobs to the rest of the organization. This is especially true as the industry continues to do more with less (as has been very succinctly described in SHSMD's "Bridging Worlds.")

Tags: shsmd18, SHSMD, healthcare marketing, strategic growth planning

By Lee Ann Lambdin and Jason Haley

Refining Your Process for Better Marketing ROI and Growth Planning Success

The first step in any planning or marketing endeavor for a healthcare organization is service area definition. Before demographics or market share can be run, an appropriate service area must be applied.

There is no one-size-fits-all way to define a service area. In fact, there are several ways to do it. Which one is best? The answer is, it depends.  Defining a service area is both art and science.   In our years of working with healthcare strategists, marketers, and planners , we’ve   found that most organizations define their service areas incorrectly, often defining   them larger than th ey should.  

 

 

Tags: strategic growth, strategic growth planning, healthcare strategic growth, healthcare, analytics partner, data analyst, healthcare analyst, healthcare service area, service area growth

By Morgan Atkins

Within healthcare organizations, teams are now a fundamental unit of organization. One study, published in The Harvard Business Review, found that ‘‘the time spent by managers and employees in collaborative activities has ballooned by 50 percent or more’’ over the last two decades and that more than three-quarters of an employee’s day is spent communicating with colleagues at many companies.

With the emphasis on teamwork, it’s important for the practices of these teams to be thoughtfully considered. Particularly, the common and important team effort of brainstorming new ideas together. “Studies show that people working in teams tend to achieve better results and report higher job satisfaction.” The New York Times Magazine reports. Knowing that, we wanted to discuss how brainstorming can be an effective team experience.

Tags: brainstorming, strategic planning, strategic growth plan, growth mindset, growth planning, strategic growth planning, team

Tags: strategic growth, strategic growth planning, healthcare strategic growth, healthcare, data analyst, healthcare analyst, service area growth, success story

By Lee Ann Lambdin, Taylor Smith, and Jackie DeGroat

Why It’s Critical for Measuring Progress, Driving Growth, and Meeting Goals

A Playbook for Independent Hospitals and Small Health Systems

Most marketing, strategic planning, and physician relations teams recognize the value of tracking the ROI of their outreach efforts, but it's challenging to do. This is especially true for independent hospitals and small health systems.

But for these smaller healthcare providers, it's especially important that they strategize and track success in tandem, because they don't have the money or bandwidth to duplicate efforts, nor the support of a corporate office or hospital support center.

Tags: strategic growth, strategic growth planning, healthcare strategic growth, healthcare, analytics partner, data analyst, healthcare analyst, healthcare service area, service area growth

Practical Tips for Maintaining a Growth Mindset in your Organization

By Morgan Atkins

Stratasan understands how paramount change is to progress. We strive to be trailblazers in the healthcare space, developing innovative tools and services that address our clients' growth goals. The best way we can effectively lead our clients and provide value is by innovative thinking that challenges the status quo. Our goal is to empower our customers with the strategies that will equip them to more effectively face a challenging and ever-evolving healthcare industry.

At the heart of innovation is the ability to reframe your perspective. Henry Ford once said "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." Often, the question itself limits what you think the possibilities are. If you have an open mind about the possibilities, you maximize your chances of building effective and unexpected solutions.

Tags: hospital growth, core values, development, healthcare leadership, leadership, change, healthcare trends, healthcare growth, working smarter, strategy, strategic planning, strategic growth planning, healthcare strategy, growth, growth planning

By Tony Camarata

Is your healthcare system failing to meet annual strategic goals due to a lack of organizational alignment? Studies show that the highest-performing healthcare organizations have a strategic plan that sets a clear direction for all functional teams. This plan succeeds or fails depending upon organization-wide understanding of the goals, tactics, and measurable outcomes needed to fulfill the strategic goals. Conversely, if your team is unable to establish alignment, your health system risks stagnation and year-over-year frustration about your inability to meet goals and expectations.  

Here’s a look at how to improve your hospital’s organizational alignment from top to bottom and why getting this right could be the key to meeting your annual strategic goals.

Tags: strategic growth, strategic growth planning, healthcare strategic growth, healthcare, strategic planners, strategic planning, data, alignment

By Lee Ann Lambdin

The Society of Healthcare Strategy & Market Development (SHSMD) annual conference is the biggest healthcare strategy conference nationwide. As stated on their website, it is “the premier conference for healthcare marketing, public relations and communications, and strategic planning professionals.” Headed into its 21st year, SHSMD Connections 2017 is taking place September 24 - 27 in Orlando, FL.

With an estimated 1,400+ healthcare marketing, public relations and communications, and strategic planning professionals on-site, 60 sessions to choose from, 8 targeted learning tracks, and more than 4 hours worth of keynote sessions, this conference can easily be an enriching experience for attendees, but it can also feel like you’re drinking from a firehose.

Tags: strategic growth, strategic growth planning, healthcare strategic growth, healthcare, analytics partner, service area growth, SHSMD, shsmd17, healthcare conference, conference

By Taylor Smith

When you’ve invested significant time, capital, and resources into your organization’s growth and expansion, you want to ensure that your efforts are paying off.

You’ve walked through all the right steps for strategic growth planning: you conducted a business and operational analysis, developed a strategic plan, and your team has been executing against it. This planning process can be daunting for any team to manage, but especially so if you are a smaller hospital or one of the many hospital systems trying to maintain a growth mindset in the face of downsizing.

You have now arrived at step 8 of a successful strategic growth process: reviewing your plan’s execution to measure progress. The purpose of this review is to make sure your hard work is paying off and your goals are being achieved.

Tags: strategic growth, strategic growth planning, healthcare strategic growth, healthcare, strategic planners, strategic planning, data, big data, healthcare data